Scout-Out

"Turn to the TV Tropes section of your Fireside Girl Handbooks."

The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (or "Scouts" and "Girl Guides", in most of the world outside the United States) are ubiquitous institutions around the world. Almost everyone knows someone who's in them (or was in them during childhood or adolescence). So, it is no surprise that in the land of fiction that they would appear.

However, there's a problem: The Scouts are trademarked.^note In the U.S., "Scout" has been trademarked by the Boy Scouts of America. The Girl Scouts also cannot call themselves "Scouts" because it violates the Boy Scout trademark. So, to get around this, writers will typically invent a Bland Name version of the Scouts (which also makes them their respective theme park versions).

There's another problem, too: in a fantasy setting, it might not make sense to have Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, but it might make sense to have the Bug Scouts.

All Girl Scouts will only deal with selling cookies (and often be evil) while the Boy Scouts will only do merit badges, often for random and absurd reasons. Sometimes they'll combine the two, and you'll have male and female scouts selling cookies to get merit badges. Boy Scouts also occasionally help old ladies across the street. Usually the Girl Scouts are renamed something involving flowers or other girly things^note In real life, the UK junior Girl Guides were originally the Rosebuds but were renamed the Brownies because the girly name was off-putting to tomboys, and the Boy Scouts are usually renamed something related to wilderness or camping.

The scouts may go on a camping trip at Camp Wackyname to canoe and roast marshmallows. To add drama, a rainstorm and a Hard-to-Light Fire may turn it into a Horrible Camping Trip.

There's some Truth in Television to this, as real-life alternatives/knockoffs/spinoffs to the Scouts have appeared all over the world.

Remember not to include Averted Trope examples where the actual Boy or Girl Scouts organizations make an appearance.

Not to be confused with Shout-Out, which this trope's name is a pun on, or the colloquial term for reconnaissance.

---

Examples:

Comic Books

• This rule does not seem to cover referring to characters as, say, "the big blue boy scout". Clark joined the Scouts while growing up in Smallville, and even knows proper knots.
• Mastermind from The Batman Adventures went to the youth scouts of America. There he was trained by Scoutmaster Bloodkill, who taught him to make "Be prepared" his way of life, and not just a motto like the chumps in that other organization.
• Bone's "Tall Tales" anthology book featured the "Bone Scouts" in the stories' Framing Device.
• The Junior Woodchucks, in the Donald Duck / Disney Ducks Comic Universe of Carl Barks and his successors, take the "Be Prepared" motto of real-world Scouting into Crazy-Prepared territory. Their Great Big Book of Everything is so universally comprehensive that they eventually evolve into The Illuminati, charged with protecting secrets forbidden to non-initiates.
  • Donald himself was a member of the Little Booneheads (NOT the Little Boneheads) as a lad. Some stories had Donald trying to prove to his nephews that Boonehead training trumped Woodchuck training, usually with disastrous results.
• Lumberjanes has the Lumberjane Scouts, which are like Girl Scouts, except some of them fight mystical forces. There are also the male Scouting Lads, who are the villains in the first arc but reform after their evil camp master is unmasked and deposed.
• In Trinity #12, there's a throwaway gag about how on Anti-Matter Earth the "Bonfire Girls" and "Girl Sentries" are in the third year of their Cookie Wars. Fought with automatic weapons and explosives.

Comic Strips

• Big Nate has the Junior Woodchucks.
• Snoopy's "Beagle Scout" troop, in Peanuts. Partially averted, as Schultz had an agreement with the Boy Scouts of America to use Snoopy, Woodstock, and friends in official material for many years.

Fan Works

• Infinity Train: Wake Me Up has a dog equivalent; According to Atticus, Corginia has something called the "Corginia Cuddle Cadets", which is an organization similar to girl scouts that helps young Corginians train to become better at giving Fuzz Therapy to Passengers.
• Another Pokéfic, Pokémon: Clefairy Tales, has the usual Camper and Picnicker trainer classes, but the latter class takes this one step further with the inclusion of four special Starter-themed companies. Most prominent among them are the Squirtle Scouts (which has within its ranks Misty, the Cerulean Gym Leader) and the Bulbasaur Scouts.
• The Unova arc of Welcome To The World Of Pokemon has the Grassside Girls. They learn Pokémon related skills in addition to traditional skills.

Films — Animation

• The Emperor's New Groove has the "Junior Chipmunks". Kronk mentions being one when he was younger which is the reason why he can speak to squirrels. At the end of the movie, Kronk is shown teaching younger scouts how to speak to squirrels.
  • Kronk's New Groove: Kronk is still shown as a troop leader in the Junior Chipmunks with his troop attending a summer camp and competing against another troop of Junior Chipmunks.
• In The Triplets of Belleville, a rather pudgy American boy scout tries to help Madame Souza over the road when she's disguised herself as a blind woman. Since this is essentially a dialogue-less film, all she can do is whack him over the head repeatedly with her cane.
• Up had Wilderness Explorers, of which Russell is a member. Their uniforms are virtually identical to the Boy Scouts' official uniforms, though the colors are different.
  • The Wilderness Explorers apparently weren't satisfied with having just one Nuclear Science badge - two different ones (adorned with a radiation symbol and mushroom cloud, respectively) appear in the New Adventure Book. ^note This may or may not be a reference to the real-life BSA, where there are two different nuclear-power related badges (though in this case, one of them ("Nuclear Science") was created as a replacement for the other ("Atomic Energy"), with Atomic Energy no longer being awarded)
  • The uniforms being "virtually identical" may be due to preliminary plans to actually make Russell a Boy Scout; according to this (third message), Disney/Pixar dropped that idea after being reminded about the BSA's membership policies.
• Gabi in Vivo is a reluctant member of such a group, the Sand Dollars, whom she sees as the embodiment of soul-crushing uniformity. Her troop-mates serve as antagonists for much of the movie, trying to capture Vivo and turn him over to the proper authorities.
• In Zootopia Nick wanted to join the Junior Ranger Scouts when he was a kit, but the local troop consisted entirely of racist herbivores who stuck a muzzle on him. At another point in the film when Yax first met Judy, he mistakenly assumed she was selling 'bunny scout cookies'.

Films — Live-Action

• A Girl Scout appears in The Addams Family, trying to sell cookies. Wednesday asks if the cookies contain real Girl Scouts.
• In Ali G Indahouse, Ali teaches a scout-esque group of kids how to "Keep it real" at the local leisure centre; it's the threat by the council to demolish this building that launches Ali into the murky world of politics.
• In Arlington Road a Scouts-like organization plays an important part in the story.
• The Big Year briefly features a troop of "Explorers."
• Bushwhacked has the "Ranger Scouts". Though interestingly, Ranger Scouts do have the Eagle rank.
• Fitzwilly features the "Platypi".
• Kansas City Princess: This wacky comedy has Rosie and Marie fleeing from Rosie's boyfriend Dynamite after Rosie's flirtation with another man gets her engagement ring stolen. Rosie and Marie are trying to make their escape on a train out of Kansas City, but Dynamite's train has already arrived at the station. So in an attempt to get away unnoticed, they hurriedly filch two uniforms and join the Outdoor Girls of America, a group of teenaged not-Girl Scouts on their way to New York.
• "Wilderness Girls" also sell cookies in Loaded Weapon 1.
• Moonrise Kingdom has the "Khaki Scouts".
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington features the "Boy Rangers."
• The "Firefly Scouts" sell cookies in the Vin Diesel movie The Pacifier.
• Peppermint has Riley being confronted by another member of the Firefly den for selling cookies on her turf.
• Troop Beverly Hills: A movie about the "Wilderness Girls". Although the Girl Scouts don't exist in this universe, the Boy Scouts do. When Phyllis takes the girls to the uniform store, there's a "Boy Scouts" sign next to the "Wilderness Girls" sign.
• In the movie Wag the Dog, the scandal that prompts the plot to happen involves a "Firefly Girl" that the President is accused of fondling just fourteen days before election time.

Literature

• The Sharing in Animorphs models itself as a sort of combination Boy/Girl Scout group, but they are actually a front group of the Yeerks to make people into Controllers.
• An early example - possibly the Ur-Example - would be the Gorbals Die-Hards, a group of Glasgow street urchins who feature in John Buchan's 1922 novel Huntingtower. They consciously model themselves on the Boy Scouts of the day.
• In Jingo, Carrot creates the Wolf Cubs (so called because Angua is involved), a version of the Cub Scouts. Its very reluctant and embarrassed membership actually comprises two of the nastier kid gangs in the city, who go along with it because when Carrot gets enthusiastic about something, it's very hard to say no.
  • The Ankh-Morpork Scouting And Urban Survival Association becomes more formalized in the squib "Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts", and a young dwarf in Raising Steam is a member of the Rat Pack.
• J. D. Salinger's 1949 short story "The Laughing Man" is centered on a nine-year-old boy in 1920s New York who's part of a fictional youth organization called the "Comanche Club", which is implied to be a Fictional Counterpart of the Boy Scouts. The troop's leader is a young NYU law student known only as "The Chief", a title apparently analogous to "Scoutmaster".
• Liv in the Future: A pair of scouts who are made of blue fire sell Liv cookies. While traditional cookies like thin mints, tagalongs, and samoas still exist in the year 3000, “electric bleeding insect shortbread” is an option.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events book 10 introduced the Snow Scouts, whose alphabetical parody of the Boy Scout Law holds them to be "accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantined, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered."
• In Sewer, Gas & Electric, the Boy and Girl Scouts have merged into a single organization 20 Minutes into the Future, and have become so urbanized that a troop is shown engaging in a "nature walk" in the slums, taking notes on graffiti, and learning about wildlife from a dead mutant rat.

Live-Action TV

• 3rd Rock from the Sun had the Beaver Scouts.
  • Interestingly the British Scouting movement includes Beaver Scouts as its most junior unit. Don't worry, they usually don't notice the Double Entendre until they're too old to be a member...^note Pedantic note: "beaver" isn't really a British euphemism for "fanny" or "minge" anyway so nobody would notice.
• The Adventures of Pete & Pete had Kreb Scout Monica Perling.
• The Big Bang Theory: Amy was once a Girl Sprout, a group her mother set up.
  Amy: She didn't want me selling cookies on some street corner like a whore.
  • That actually can count as a subversion; some Girl Scout councils have a program by that name set up to introduce prekindergarten girls to Girl Scout activities.
• Bones featured the Woodchucks, a Girl Scout-esque group affiliated with the Jeffersonian.
• The Brady Bunch had the Frontier Scouts and Sunflower Girls for all of one episode, when Marcia joined Greg's Scout troop to prove that a girl could do anything a boy could do; Greg then forced Peter to join Marcia's Sunflowers (Greg was too old) and sell cookies to prove the other way around. Naturally she succeeds and he fails.
• In series one of Broadchurch, Danny Latimer and Tom Miller are members of the 'Sea Brigade' which is a Sea Scout troop in all but name. It's run by Jack Marshall - despite the fact that he's a convicted pedophile who was jailed for having sex with an underage girl. In real life in the UK, such a man would not be able to have anything to do with the Scout Association (or most other youth organizations for that matter) due to the criminal records checks carried out on all adult volunteers.
• Criminal Minds had the Tadpoles, whose recognizable uniform helped solve a case.
• Drake & Josh featured the Campfire Kids.
• A variant on Everybody Hates Chris, where Rochelle tries to get the kids into "Hansel and Gretel", a parody of the real-life organization Jack and Jill of America, which is a social organization for African-American youth (somewhat similar to Girl/Boy Scouts, but founded at a time when black children wouldn't have been allowed in those organizations), mostly made up of wealthy families.
• In Everybody Loves Raymond, Allie Barone is a Frontier Girl in a troop led by Peggy The Cookie Nazi.
• Family Ties had Sunflower Girls.
• Friends has the Brown Birds. Ross accidentally breaks the leg of one little girl and starts selling cookies in her place to make up for it. Monica was also in the Brown Birds as a kid and ate all her cookies rather than sell them.
  Ross: I'm an honorary Brown Bird. (does the troop salute)
  Woman: What does that mean?
  Ross: It means I can sell cookies but I'm not invited to sleepovers.
• Full House had one, the Honey Bees. Instead of troops, they had "hives". All three Tanner girls, their aunt Rebecca and their mother Pam were members.
• The George Lopez Show had Treetop Rangers instead of Boy Scouts.
• Ghosts (UK): Pat was part of a Scout-like group which the writers are very careful not to identify it as such. The uniform is similar but different and the organization is never given a name. In Ghosts (US), the group is called the Pinecone Troopers.
• The Golden Girls had Sunshine Cadets.
• Played with in The Goodies episode "Scoutrageous"; the organisation Tim is a member of is the Scouts, with full British Scouts uniform (albeit the 1930s version, because it looks funnier) and "dyb dyb dyb" salute, but his rank is Brown Owl, which is from the Brownies (junior Girl Guides). Meanwhile, Graeme and Bill form an evil Scouts movement, which leads to them earning the World Domination merit badge, and Scouting becoming illegal.
• Hi Honey, I'm Home!: Chucky is a Hoot Owl Scout.
• Horrible Histories: The Hitler Youth. "It is just like ze scouts... only evil!"
• iCarly had Spencer helping the mother of a Sunshine Girl sell Fudgeballs.
  • The Sunshine Girls also make a small cameo on Victorious.
• Jessie was an Armadillo Scout and kept her uniform. Emma and Zuri are both Butterfly Scouts (Emma is a Monarch, First Class, later demoted to Larvae, Second Class for buying her badges without earning them, while Zuri starts the episode at Caterpillar, before being promoted to Butterfly for earning a (non-official) Outwitting an Ostrich badge).
• Just the Ten of Us: J.R. is a member of the Nature Scouts.
• "Lazy Scouts," an episode of LazyTown, has the organization by the same name, created by Robbie Rotten, the resident Dastardly Whiplash who wants to keep all the kids in town lazy so he can get some sleep. His idea is that they essentially don't do all of the things you would normally associate with scouting groups.
  Robbie: We'll walk up a mountain, we'll go camping and always play outdoors!
  Ziggy: Really?
  Robbie: Gotcha!
• On The Middle, Brick joins the Prairie Scouts.
• The Middleman had the "Wilderness Girls," perhaps as a Shout-Out to Troop Beverly Hills.
• In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Kimberly is leading a group of young girls called 'Angelettes" on a hike when they are attacked by a monster named Magnet Brain.
• Murdoch Mysteries: The episode "A Cottage in the Woods" has a troop of Young Adventurettes, who were formed after a number of girls demanded to join the Young Adventurers.
• The Nanny had the Red Robins.
• Odd Squad has the Junior Girl Troopers. They were previously referred to as "the Scouts" in "First Day" before being officially named in "Show Me the Money". It's unknown if there is a Junior Boy Troopers equivalent for boys, however.
• One Tree Hill had the Lady Leprechauns.
• On Orange Is the New Black, Frieda used to be a Girl Scout in her youth (before she became a Serial Killer). She didn't fit in with the rest of the troop, because their focus (this being The '40s or The '50s) was on things like knitting and baking, and she liked camping and learning outdoor survival skills, like her dad would teach her.
• Parks and Recreation has the "Pawnee Rangers" for boys and the "Pawnee Goddesses" for girls, the latter founded by Leslie Knope because girls were not allowed in the former.
• Sabrina on Raising Hope is a former member of the Beaver Scouts (which do exist in the UK, but not in the US where the show originates)
• The Space Scouts in Red Dwarf.
• Spaced has Creepy Twins who look suspiciously similar to Girl Guides cleaning the cupboards for 'Bob-a-Job' week in Daisy and Tim's flat. This despite the fact that 'Bob-a-Job' week was a Scout (not Guide) fundraising activity that had ceased by the time Spaced was made. ^note It was called 'Bob-a-Job' week because the standard charge for Scouts doing odd jobs for members of the public was a shilling - a unit of currency that was widely known as a 'bob'. The name was rendered meaningless when shillings were done away with when Britain decimalised its currency in 1971, following which the name changed to 'Scout Job Week'. In 2012, it was resurrected as 'Scout Community Week'.
• Disney's That's So Raven had the Sunshine Girls. They show up again in Hannah Montana, another Disney Channel show.
• T.J. Hooker had a daughter in the "Girl Rangers."

Music

• "The Battle of Kookamonga" by Homer and Jethro.
• “Be Prepared” by Tom Lehrer, a parody/satire song about the sorts of “skills” a scout needs to be prepared, subverts this tropes as it mentions the Boy Scouts by name, which is legally acceptable under the fair use parody exception of US copyright law.

Puppet Shows

• The Muppets:
  • Robin on The Muppet Show once joined the Frog Scouts, whose difference from the Boy Scouts was rather obvious.
  • There are plenty more groups where that came from.

Roleplay

• In There is no GATE; we did not fight there, the Boy Scouts, Rhavenfell edition is created when Kytheus stumbles upon the group of boys Lyon had taken to training together while connecting it to Valerian's idea for a training camp for the noble sons of Rhavenfell.

Tabletop Games

• In Illuminati, one of the organizations you can try to take over is the "Boy Sprouts".
• In BattleTech, a scout like organization called Youth Pathfinders is mentioned in the novel Lost Destiny in passing, and mentioned in the Third Edition of the roleplaying rules as a possible event for a character.

Video Games

• Mentioned a few times in City of Villains, where the evil supervillain dictator sponsors "Spiderling Scouts".
• In The Darkside Detective, Dooley is involved with a local scouting organization called the Bloodwolves. He mentions that they were originally affiliated with the Boy Scouts until "the mayor failed to pay the dyb-dyb-dyb tax". The Bloodwolves are coeducational (there are both boys and girls in Dooley's pack) and tend toward the Boy Scout model, with camping trips and a variety of weird merit badges.
• Don't Starve has Walter, a member of the Pinetree Pioneers who uses the extensive knowledge of outdoor survival he learned there to his advantage.
• Kingdom of Loathing, as of July 2012, has the CSA, which seems to be somewhere between this and an actual paramilitary organization. They have no age limit, which is good as membership is permanent and irrevocable. Their activities include camping, drinking, and something which requires mind control grenades and access to a Kill Sat network.
• League of Legends has "Captain Teemo", a yordle scout that takes many cues from the BSA while also being military as well. His unit is called "Scouts of the Mothership", or "Omega Squad" where he straight-up becomes the Ranger.
• Boy and Girl Scouts appear as a class of Trainers in the Pokémon games. They were originally named exactly that in the Japanese versions, but for legal reasons became "Jr. Trainers" in the translations, and eventually became "Campers" for the boys and "Picnickers" for the girls.^note With the Japanese editions settling for the Engrishy names of "Camp Boy" and "Camp Girl."
• Psychonauts has the psychopathic "Rainbow Squirts", who try to sell "Rainbow Treats" to everyone.
• The old Color Dreams NES game Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise focuses on a scout of an unnamed scouting organization that has been separated from the rest of his troop and has stumbled upon the evil operation of the evil Doctor Demise and his band of scum-sucking cohorts in an ancient temple that they've co-opted for use as a base.
• The Spiral Scouts has you playing a member of the woods group, warning merit badges, solving puzzles, and performing the eldritch rituals of your troop.
• Flipline Studio's online game Steak And Jake features the "Cookie Scouts" on some levels. The company's more famous Papa's Gameria series features Cookie Scout Yippy.
• Sunset Overdrive has the Troop Bushidos, a group of scouts stationed in a museum who use Samurai weapons and armor. They are older than most examples, which is stated to be due to them being more focused on survivalist training.
• Team Fortress 2 has the Saxonettes.◊
• Zombies, Run! has a number of Season 2 bonus missions revolving around a group of Girl Guides who use their wilderness survival knowledge to be quite adept at surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.

Web Animation

• Camp Camp has the Wood Scouts, an all-male paramilitary/Scout hybrid, and the Flower Scouts, an all-Female group of Girly girls.
• Pucca has the "Dragon Girls" featured in one episode.

Webcomics

• Air Force Blues: occasionally features youth members of the Civil Air Patrol, who keep insisting that they are part of the Air Force (much to Barbie's ongoing chagrin). In fact, one of the CAP Cadets that Barbie has antagonized in the past turns out to be his fiancée's little brother. The CAP Cadets are of course a case of Truth in Television, though their skillset tends more towards emergency response, as opposed to the Boy Scouts' general-preparedness, wilderness survival, and civic duty angle.
• Ennui GO! has the Adventure Scouts, Key Manati's answer to youth scouting groups. Max and his friends were all members, with Len as their scouts master, so they learned more esoteric things alongside the usual camping trips and fundraisers.
• Lookouts (part of Penny Arcade's Eyrewood Adventures setting) can be summed up as "Boy Scouts in a High Fantasy-style forest realm".
• The first storyline of P.I. Jane features a female scout organization called the Susie Bees. (Author's note: "The Susie Bee Organization is nothing like the Girl Scouts of America. They are, in fact, completely different. We swear.")

Web Original

• The Toy Scouts in Doctor Steel's fan club, the Army of Toy Soldiers.

Western Animation

• "Kid Scouts" are mentioned, but not seen, in an episode of Arthur ^note  Production duties for Arthur are split between facilities in Boston, Montreal, and Toronto. Because scout groups in both Canada and America had different membership policies at the time this episode was produced, the production team may have been torn about which group to parody, and decided to split the difference and go a minimalist route. where Buster takes desperate measures to pace his consumption of what might as well be-Girl Scout cookies.
• The Backyardigans has the episode "Pablor and the Acorns", in which Tyrone, Tasha, and Austin were Acorn Scouts.
• Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!: In "The Norse Case Scenario", Daphne dresses up as a Nature Ranger.
• Beetlejuice: The episode "Creepy Cookies" introduces the "Happy Face Girls", which Lydia is forced to join after Delia becomes the new Den Mother. And Beetlejuice, wanting to cash in on their cookie drive, makes his own scout troop; the "Sappy Face Ghouls".
• Blaze and the Monster Machines has the "Truck Rangers".
• Bob's Burgers has the "Thundergirls", who give out merit badges, sell cookies door-to-door, and go on camping trips. Tina is a member of one of the local troops.
• Bruno the Kid poses as a Bavarian Camping Boy in the second episode. Members wear lederhosen and traditional Bavarian hats and sell pies instead of cookies.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has the Ranger Scouts.
• Everyone in Camp Lazlo is one of these, the boys are the "Bean Scouts" and the girls were the "Squirrel Scouts".
• Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot has the "Cub Bouts."
• Chowder has the Apprentice Scouts.
• Doug had the "Bluff Scouts".
• In one episode of Dragon Tales, Cassie invites Emmy to her Dragon Scouts meeting as her guest, though in this case, Dragon Scouts is for girls only.
• DuckTales (1987): "Junior Woodchucks", notable because it played a major role in many episodes.
  • And their female counterparts the Junior Chickadees.
  • The reboot also features the Junior Woodchucks, which is now shown to be open to both genders.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy had the Urban Rangers.
• On Ella the Elephant, Ella and her friends are members of the "Trunk Troopers." They get to wear special hats and go on adventures in the "great unknown."
• Exo Squad had ExoScouts, who were actually more like military cadets than scouts.
  • Noteworthy if only because they were a scout troop using their scout skills to survive in the mountains due to the less-than-friendly Neo Sapiens having conquered Earth.
    • Sounds like someone on the writing staff was a Robert A. Heinlein fan...
• The Fairly OddParents! had the Squirrelly Scouts. Timmy's dad was a scoutmaster who had the high rank of "flying squirrel" (Ground squirrel was mentioned as a lower rank). They also have a Distaff Counterpart in the Creampuffs. Timmy's babysitter was the Scout Mistress (at least in Oh Yeah! Cartoons) until that position was given to his mother (what caused Vicky to step down from her position was unknown).
• In an early episode of Family Guy, Chris is a reluctant member of the Youth Scouts.
• Fillmore! had the "Red Robins", who happened to be crooked.
• The Flintstones had the Cave Scouts, who all decided to go camping at the same site that Fred and Barney decided to camp at.
• Franklin had the Woodland Trailblazers, who weren't introduced until the program's final season.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy had the "Person Scouts".
  • Before becoming a series of its own, Evil Con Carne had one episode featuring a girl troop named "Terror Troop". They were so evil Hector Con Carne invited them to join the League of Destruction.
• Hey Arnold! had the "Campfire Lasses", who all had Scottish accents to go with their name.
  • Despite mostly being an all-girl organization in most episodes, they seem to not have a problem with allowing boys in. In the "Chocolate Turtles" episode, Arnold and Gerald pretended to show interest in joining in order to buy their turtles at a discount member price. Before their secret was blown, the leader of the group was more than enthusiastic to have the boys join and referred to them as "Campfire Lads".
• Hey Duggee is a preschool-age targeted animated series about a group of anthropomorphic animal kids in a scout group called the Squirrels (none of them are actually squirrels) under the leadership of a non-talking dog named Duggee. Duggee is a good leader for them because he has already earned all of the badges they are trying to earn. Each episode is titled after the badges they are trying to earn, such as "The Super Squirrel Badge" and "The Drawing Badge."
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi featured the "Tapeworm Scouts".
• Hilda has The Sparrow Scouts, a coeducational scouting group of which Hilda and her friends are members. The Scout's lodge also fills the role that the school normally would, linking the main trio together socially. Episodes that focus on them contain typical scout activities like earning badges, charity work, and a camping trip.
• Jackie Chan Adventures has Jade join both the "Buttercup" (girl) and "Dragon" (boy) Scouts, albeit in separate episodes
  • Jackie once supervises Jade's Buttercup troop.
  • Three of the Dragon Scouts are Frank (Finn's nephew), Charlie (Chow's nephew), and Rocco (Ratso's nephew).
• Subverted in The Jetsons when Elroy's Space Cub Scout pack went to the Moon.
• Johnny Bravo has the Buttercup Scouts, of which Susie is a member.
• Kid vs. Kat had the Greeny Girls.
• Kim Possible has "The Pixie Scouts".
  • In a third season episode called Bonding, the eponymous heroine reveals that she herself was a Pixie Scout at one point and that Mr. Barkin, a teacher at Middleton High School, acts as a den mother to a troop of Pixie Scouts in Middleton (or "Brigadier Pixie" as he calls it).
• King of the Hill had the Order of the Straight Arrow (the Boy Scouts of America have an honor society called the Order of the Arrow). Later, it was mentioned in passing that Hank had been a Boy Scout.
  • One episode featured a girl group selling cookies and trying to strong-arm competition (a.k.a. Bobby) out of the cookie selling business.
• Some episodes of The Little Mermaid (1992) show Sebastian leading a pack of "crab scouts".
• The Loud House episode "Patching Things Up", has Lola and Lana trying out for the Bluebell Scouts. A subplot features Lincoln and Clyde searching their campground for Bluebell Scout cookies.
• The Bunny Scouts in Max and Ruby.
• The Mighty B! featured the "Honeybee Scouts". Several other groups make minor appearances.
• In Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends, Squirt, Bounce, Shimmer, Dragon, and Snowdrop are part of the Bug Scouts. Mr. Mantis is the leader, though their father Holley takes over the role in one story when Mr. Mantis is injured.
• Molly of Denali: "The Night Watchers" introduces the Neegoo Tsal troupe, a scouting group intended to teach kids wilderness survival, observation and conservation skills.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Equestrian equivalent to Girl Scouts are called "Filly Guides", as seen in "28 Pranks Later" where the CMC are selling cookies. They were seen even earlier, in "Just for Sidekicks", but there was only one background pony without voice lines representing the organization, and as such it went unnamed.
• In the pilot episode of Neighbors from Hell Balthazor excitedly says, "I hope it's another one of those girls from the cookie army."
• The Oblongs had the Little Amazons.
• OK Ko Lets Be Heroes: In one episode, K.O. joins the Sidekick Scouts and meets Combo Breaker, a rookie hero who's even more cute and excitable than he is.
• In the Pac-Man short "Backpackin' Packy", Pac-Man becomes a substitute leader for the Baby Scouts, of which his own Pac-Baby is a member.
• Phineas and Ferb has the "Fireside Girls", who are pictured above. Like the Junior Woodchucks, They come prepared for any situation, they have a handbook for various subjects from Car Maintenance to Time Machines (and also Tie Machines) and accomplishment patches for absurd tasks such as Alligator Wrestling and moving mountains with their bare hands.^note  With that said, not everything has a patch, such as Underwater Equestrian Riding or Persistence. They also subvert a lot of the elements described: they're not named after anything particularly girly, they aren't evil, and they appear frequently in the series. They do, however, sell cupcakes (in log-shaped boxes), which are irresistible.
  • In various Alternate Universe episodes, variant Fireside Girls exist: Phineas and Ferb Star Wars has the Firestar Girls, Excaliferb has the Watersprite Girls, the Second Dimension has the Firestorm Girls, the prehistoric Tri-Stone Area has the Caveside Girls, and Wizard of Odd has the Patchkins.
  • "We Call it Maze" has Isabella mentoring a member of the Lil' Sparks, the junior branch of the Fireside Girls.
• The Problem Solverz has the Little Explorers.
• In Puppy Dog Pals, Chloe is part of the Nature Scouts.
• Ready Jet Go!: Sean is part of the Space Scouts, as shown in "Eye in the Sky".
• Recess had the Woodchuck Scouts. Slightly subverted in that Phil the Scout wears what appears to be a normal Boy Scout uniform, and is a frequently recurring character.
• Rocko's Modern Life had the Weasel Scouts. Also, a Girl Scout (or similar) appears on the Show Within a Show Meet the Fatheads.
• The Rugrats episode "Pee Wee Scouts" has the babies pretending to be scouts after seeing home movies of Stu as a boy scout.
• The Simpsons had the "Junior Campers". Bart inadvertently joins them while having a sugar rush in "Boy Scoutz 'n the Hood" and is horrified when he wakes up wearing the uniform the following morning. He starts to like it when he realizes that he can get out of school tests in order to attend meetings.
  • Lampshade Hanging: The Junior Campers' meeting room has a sign on the door saying "Not affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America".
  • Another episode had a rivalry between two such groups, the American Indian-themed Pre-Teen Braves and the Cavalry Kids. The Junior Dandies made a brief cameo as a rival to both groups when they competed for the title of honorary ball boys for a baseball game.
  • A "Radioactive Man" episode had The Scoutmaster (with his boy minions) as a villain, who talked like Paul Lynde.
  • In another episode, Barney Gumble mistakenly attends a Girl Scout meeting (thinking that it's an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting). Lisa is one of the Girl Scouts present.
• Sofia the First:
  • The Buttercup Scouts, usually just called "the Buttercups", are the Enchancian equivalent of the Girl Scouts. They are headed by the titular character's friend's mother, and engage in activities like camping and community service. Their uniform is a yellow and white dress.
  • In one of the episodes featuring the Buttercups, the Groundhog Scouts are mentioned to be the Enchancian equivalent of the Boy Scouts. Baileywick, the castle steward, was a member of the latter when he was younger. While they do not make an appearance throughout the series, it's implied they engage in similar activities to the Buttercups.
• South Park had the Mountain Scouts. They're led by Big Gay Al, but he gets thrown out when the scouting authorities realize that he's gay (this results in a lawsuit which goes all the way to the Supreme Court - although Al, one of the few genuinely nice people in the show, accepts that the Scouts have the right to exclude people if they choose to). In another episode, Kyle is a member of the Squirts, the junior section of the Jew Scouts who all meet for Jewbilee and make simple crafts to honor Moses.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Goons on the Moon" has Sandy leading the Science Scouts, which consists of SpongeBob, Pearl, and Squidina; on a camping trip to the moon.
• While not seen, the T.O.T.S. episode "Far Far From Home" has KC mention how she used to be a part of the Campfire Critters.
• Transformers: Rescue Bots has the Lad Pioneers.
• Vampirina: The episode "Woodchuck Woodsies" has Vee joining Poppy and Bridget in the titular group doing various activities before they sell cookies at the end. Vee mentions how she was in a similar group back in Transylvania called the Ghoul Guides.
• In the Wacky Races short "Scout Scatter", the Ant Hill Mob disguise themselves as Wood Scouts. Dick Dastardly poses as their scoutmaster.
• We Bare Bears: In "Poppy Rangers", Grizzly tags along with Ranger Tabes as she leads a troop of gung-ho Poppy Rangers on a hike through a cave.
• Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: Xavier, Yadina, and Brad are part of the Nature Troop, which is seen in a few episodes.

Real Life

• A few months after the Boy Scouts of America were founded in 1910 by the Chicago newspaper magnate William D. Boyce, the very similarly named American Boy Scouts was founded by none other than William Randolph Hearst, Boyce's biggest rival, seemingly just so that Hearst would not be outdone. Unlike the BBS (see below), Hearst believed that the BSA weren't militaristic enough and so the ABS were all trained in firearms and would stage mock battles using blanks. Eventually, they renamed themselves the United States Boy Scouts because the similar names confused people during fundraising. Later on, the aforementioned trademark kicked in and the USBS renamed themselves to the American Cadets and the U.S. Junior Military Forces before finally disbanding.
• In the UK, the Scouts have a few traditionalist splinter-groups that can call themselves 'scouts' because the name isn't trademarked.
  • The British Boy Scouts (BBS) comprised of several troops which split from Baden-Powell in 1909 over concerns about the Scout movement being too militaristic. Despite the name, they admitted girls and had co-educational troops long before the Scout Association did so ^note  Groups of girls calling themselves 'Girl Scouts' attended a Scout rally and met with Baden-Powell in 1909. Bowing to then-contemporary public opinion (although nevertheless aware that girls were interested in Scouting), he subsequently got his sister to set up the Girl Guides as a separate organization for girls, although it was his wife who went on to become the first Chief Guide. The Scout Association - which stopped referring to Scouts as 'Boy Scouts' in the 1960s - started to accept girls in all sections in the 1990s. The very few BBS units that still exist wear traditional uniforms of the sort that were phased out by the Scout Association in the 1960s (campaign hats, shorts, etc.).
  • The Baden-Powell Scouts (B-P Scouts for short) were founded in 1970 by Scout leaders who felt that the Scout Association was abandoning the traditional way of scouting as laid out in Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys. Lady Baden-Powell, who outlived her much older husband by 36 years, gave them permission to use the Baden-Powell name. Like the BBS, they wear traditional uniforms. There are B-P Scouts in several other countries, including Canada and the USA where they're called the Baden-Powell Service Association.
  • The Pathfinder Scouts are another traditional scouting organization made up of individuals and units that have at various times split from the BBS and/or the B-P Scouts due to disagreements over traditional scouting.
• Scouting was banned in most communist countries, with its officially sanctioned replacement being the Pioneer Movement. However, some Scouting movements in Europe actually survived the communist era; in Yugoslavia the Scout movement was retained by the Tito government alongside the Pioneers but was re-organized to follow the government line. In Poland, the Scouts were simply converted to the Pioneers.
• Scouting was also banned in fascist and other right-wing authoritarian countries and replaced by officially sanctioned youth organizations. Examples include the Hitler Youth (Germany), the Opera Nazionale Balilla (Italy), and the Mocidade Portuguesa (Portugal).
• In then-Czechoslovakia, some individual troops managed to continue their activities during Nazi occupation and communist rule under the umbrellas of other, permitted organizations such as the Club of Czech Tourists or local sport clubs (during communism, many factories would have their own sporting clubs and sympathetic people in the leadership might allow the organization of children under their auspices regardless of whether their parents worked in the factory in question). During the long period of communist rule, under such umbrellas, new groups might also sometimes spring up that would eventually proudly proclaim their inspiration by and allegiance to the Scouting movement after the Velvet Revolution. (Czech Scouting has its own unique flavor compared to the American version, which makes some of the common tools of this trope in American media less useful as a shorthand for the uninitiated. Namely, don't expect Czech Girl Scouts to be selling cookies.)
• Camp Fire is a rival organization to scouting in the USA, and has literally been around since weeks after the start of the Boy Scouts of America. It was originally created specifically as a Distaff Counterpart to the BSA (called the Camp Fire Girls), but went gender-inclusive in the 1970s; about half of its membership is boys these days. That said, a lot of people still only know it as the "Camp Fire Girls."
• There are a number of other similar youth groups in America, both secular and religiously based.
• While there is no equivalent trademark in Poland, the situation regarding scouts is pretty much crazy, with multiple major organizations, being relatively friendly towards each other but differing in some rules. They are still more similar to each other than to international scouts, though, due to very weird utilization of scouts during complex Polish history.
• The situation in then-Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 30s, soon after the introduction of the original Scouting movement in the 1910s, was apparently similar to the above situation in Poland: with several of the conflicting worldwide movements and with a number of the ideological movements of the time also trying to "cash in" on the growing popularity of Scouting and camping out. Out of the people who "aged out" of these groups or simply did not like the high level of organization involved in them was soon born the uniquely Czech Tramping movement (which ended up being not this trope but entirely its own thing).
• Israel has several youth movements that like to poke fun at each other, including the Scouts. Unlike the US, these movements are generally not segregated by sex.
• The Spiral Scouts are an alternative to the Boy Scouts based on Wiccan principles but inclusive of all faiths, creeds, genders, disabilities, and sexual orientations (for leaders as well). Started at a time when the Boy Scouts were an explicitly Christian organization and banned LGBT members and leaders.
• Seventh-Day Adventists have Pathfinders as an alternative.
• The Boys' Brigade is a more explicitly Christian equivalent that actually started 24 years before the Scouts. It is probably the ur-example of a uniformed children's/youth organization. Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts, was actually a supporter of the Boys' Brigade - members of it were among the boys who took part in the 1907 Brownsea Island camp which many see as marking the start of Scouting ^note  the Scouts' centenary was celebrated in 2007 - and did not initially set out to establish a rival youth organization. Several early Scout troops were off-shoots of Boys' Brigade units.
• The Woodcraft Folk are a left-wing British alternative to the Scouts and Guides, for children (and/or their parents) who object to the perceived militaristic/religious/royalist aspects of the Scout Association and Girlguiding UK. They began as an off-shoot of the Kibbo Kift, a neo-pagan organization for adults - the founder of which had been a Scout leader who'd become disillusioned with Baden-Powell.

---